About the book.

Petra’s acclaimed short film Xmas Cake—This American Shelf-life is now a full-length autobiographical novel that puts film’s story in its full context. The real title’s hush-hush, so for now, she’s calling it...Xmas Cake, the Book.

The story…

When a single New York fashion designer on the brink of thirty rejects the "have it all" hustle, she asks herself: "Why have a wedding when I could have my own band?" 

Xmas Cake, the Book is a rock and roll story told rom-com-style with a subversive twist. Meet Petra, a native Manhattanite stuck in a corporate fashion grind as Y2K fears loom on the digital horizon. While her co-workers chase engagement rings, she looks back at her freewheeling days in Tokyo, often daydreaming on the job about her friend, Yuki who's tragic story becomes a spark for her rebellion, and new obsession: starting a band.

With zero music experience—Petra creates an amateur Japanese-themed ’60s garage band and joins the New York music scene of the early 2000s. It’s all fun and fantasy until she stumbles into accidental fame. Inconceivably, her band,  Gaijin à Go Go, lands a record deal with Sony Japan, making history as the only “nobodies” from America ever to score a deal with this major label.

Overnight, she’s launched into pop stardom in Japan. She’s got the glitter, the gigs, and the groupies, but is ill prepared for the toll fame takes, the crushing loneliness, and the emotional baggage she just can’t shake—like growing up in a basement apartment with a single mom who was there… but not really. We see her attempt new romances and re-ask the question: Why not have a wedding AND a band?—as her longing for home and belonging hovers just out of reach. Almost there... but not really.

When her high-octane life crashes, Petra loses it all: her band, her fiancé, and her job—Starting over at forty is her worst nightmare, but it's also what deeply tests her resilience. In the end, Petra flips the script. It’s not about what she lost; it’s about what she’s found: The freedom to heal herself, grow whole, buy land and find her own uniquely empowered path—happily-ever-after—on her terms. 

The message…

Follow your dreams? Find success? Make history in a foreign country? Sure. But do it all as a single woman—and you still might end up a cautionary tale. Xmas Cake, the Book tells it like it happened, but refuses to be the punchline. Instead it delivers a bold alternative for women hitting midlife and making daring pivots—showing that self-fulfillment and reinvention are not just possible, but necessary. So is self-care. owning real estate, and finally, an exuberant catharsis. 

In a world that covets The Bachelor and rom-coms and happily-ever-afters, Petra’s story flips the script. It's a fresh, liberating take for women—single or married—who’ve ever felt sidelined for choosing themselves over tradition and every reader who's been left out of the rom-com ending.

Comp titles...

This book sits comfortably between Pamela Redmond Satran’s Younger and Older. Like Younger, it explores reinvention, ambition, and the pressure on women to stay youthful to stay relevant. But instead of faking her age to compete, Petra owns every year—and reimagines what it means to age out of the fairytale. Where Younger seeks second chances and Older celebrates he freedom that can come with age, Petra's story asks: what if being single, over forty, and totally free is the prize?

Like, No One Tells You This, the witty memoir by Glynnis MacNicol, Petra features a single woman over forty who challenges societal expectations and instead of buying into the usual shame, she celebrates her choice to not settle for less. Like Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up by Alexandra Potter, where a woman in her forties struggles with feelings of inadequacy after losing a business and a fiancé, Petra's story deals with themes of self-acceptance and finding self-worth and joy, in a life that went off-script. 

With a pitch-perfect voice of a comlex GenX-er, Petra's story spins all the labels meant to diminish women—into inspirational gold. In the recent Netfilx series, Too Much, Lena Dunham serves sharp satire of a single New Yorker off to London after heartbreak who falls for a Japanese/ British rocker. Where Too Much stays safely within the rom‑com script, Petra's story , tears it up and spins it into gold. She is the rock star who stages her own self‑marrying, self‑claiming encore. 

For music lovers, Petra's story also covers themes about the female experience in the global music industry. Much like Nobody Ever Asked Me About the Girls by Lisa Robinson, Petra reflects on the sacrifices and challenges she faces in her quest for "low-key" fame in a world dominated by men. It takes readers back to a pre-smartphone world where women raised on feminist ideals struggled to carve out space in a culture not quite ready for them. It serves heavy issues with a wink, some glitter, sharp wit, and a very groovy soundtrack.